Are The Days Of Circulation Collecting Over?

Actually . . . .


Although nobody in my family is working on a "set," per se, this is exactly why I collect*. My mother has her own little collection of Mercury dimes and an 1849 gold dollar (plus probably a couple others I don't know about--I highly doubt I've seen everything she got from her own days running a register), and she has promised that this is bequeathed to me. In turn, I'm putting together the cool stuff I find, which is intended to go to my nieces on the youngest's 18th birthday; if they don't have the interest at that time, it will be bequeathed to them (with my mother's collection). They may choose to sell it if they need the money, but it's my hope they'll go "Whoa, what's this stuff? COOL!!" and start making their own additions.

TL;DR, I love this idea!





*I don't think we've met before, so: by far the vast majority of my collection is picked from my cash drawer at work, or from change that customers hand me. I still occasionally get even rare stuff this way--the other day I found a Mercury dime in our coin changer. I do roll hunting when I have $20 to spare, but I think that probably also counts as circulation collecting, since it's not boughten strictly as a collector item.

A little off topic,sorry. I was wondering if you could post a photo of the circa 1937 Dansco album? I hope you are going to keep it. I am pretty sure that it is collectible in it's own right.
John1

Any coins your acquired from a Dad, Grand Dad, etc. are worth a lot more than the coin values. You can always buy a coin, if the price is within your budget, but you can not buy memmories. Once gone, someone that gave you something, anything, is part of your own history and memmories.
One thing about coin collecting, a great thing to pass on.

Some of my most treasured coins are those from my Great-Grandfathers, my Grandfathers, and my parents. They are "immersed" into a few of "my" albums. And my collection will be passed to a lucky family member who will hopefully continue with it.

As what most have said here......these kinds of collections are the Holy Grail that most of us respect and value THE MOST !
"Circulation grade" or not.......it will always transcend monetary value.

jbuck, not necessarily so. I have three silver quarters in my collection, two of them very lovely 1964 AUs. On CCF we just graded a Morgan dollar for my boss that somebody spent, and the only Peace dollar I own was bought out of someone's pocket for $10--it was their "lucky pocket coin" that they were happy to leave to my niece. Today, right now, in 2012, would you expect that in the span of less than ten months I could get a Mercury dime, two Roosevelt silvers, a 1969 Kennedy, three silver quarters, two Buffalo nickels (one of them XF/AU), two Indianhead pennies (one of them AU), a Morgan, a Peace, seven $1 silver certificates, a 1996 die clash (my most recent find), and an XF 1913 wheathead penny (among literally hundreds of other wheats, quite a few of them from the 1910s and 1920s), all out of a cash drawer? Would you expect that a year ago a cashier at another store in my chain heard her manager go "these dimes are all green, YUCK!" and rescued an entire roll of mixed Mercury and Roosevelt silvers that, sans verdigris, were all at worst XF, or that in the last ten months the store closest to my house produced a brand-new collector when he found a $10 silver certificate in his drawer?

All true stories. I've only ever made three coin purchases, and with the exception of the Peace dollar and the Liberty V nickels, those purchases were only to augment what I found in circulation--the wheathead books I got from my boss contained mostly coins worse, not better, than I'd found in my cash drawer, and were bought because I wanted the steelheads and the misplaced 1883 someone had put in it. I think it's safe to say that forty years from now, someone will come up a nickel short in a purchase and go "hold on--" and whip out five pennies, even if the penny is not strictly, specifically in circulation anymore. I can say that with confidence--I have easily a dozen "no longer circulating" coins pulled from circulation to prove it.

But if they stop minting the cent, since it is worth much more than a cent, banks and the Federal Reserve will pull all cents from circulation. That is exactly what Canada will do this fall, for their cents. The US will follow the same process, in the near future. No one knows the exact date yet, but it will happen.

While I agree that the cent will continue NIFC, it will quickly disappear from circulation one business strikes end. The reason why they have to mint billions every year is they disappear from circulation. A cent is often used once and then lost (whether to change jars or trash cans).

That is a pretty interesting idea. I wish my parents collected more coins. When I got my parents collection I tried to continue the series they collected. Though they're world coins its still a challenge. Good luck in your set.